Friday, November 20, 2009

Atheist Experience viewer Ruud from the Netherlands just drew my attention to another excellent reason why it's is ridiculous to blame evolutionary theory for Nazism extermination. Checking out the Index to Creationist Claims, I see that it's already on there, but since it was new to me I thought I'd share it.

The University of Arizona's site hosts a list of books that were banned in Germany in the 1930's. Among them is... take a wild guess...

Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Haeckel).

And just for good measure, there's also this:

c) All writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk.

9 comments:

They were also burning books of Sigmund Freud, because he was Jewish yes, but he also happened to be an enthusiastic "Darwinian" and an atheist. And, if I am not mistaken, they were burning HG Wells's novels too. Nazism might have been frowned upon by many Christians at that time, but it is pretty clear to me that 1)Nazis did not consider their ideology anti Christian and 2)even Christians who diapproved of Nazism did not necessarily considered the ideology an abomination.

One need not look further than the particular strain of anti-semitism espoused by the national socialists to hear the echoes of Martin Luther's 'On the Jews and Their Lies', where he openly referred to Jews as 'the devil's people' and advocated burning Jewish synagogues and homes, destroying prayerbooks and either enslaving or expelling Jews from Christian lands.

Much has been said about the occult and Norse pagan practices and beliefs of the Nazi elite as well, but many of these beliefs were limited to a fairly small clique in the highest levels of the SS and not necessarily indicative of the beliefs and practices of the Nazi leaders as a whole. Similarly, although some of them had a relationship towards religion that would get them labeled 'functionally atheist' (Albert Speer comes to mind), the fact remains that most of them were Christians.

This does not necessarily mean that the Nazis used their faith as a justification, but - as Guillaume already pointed out - neither did they regard national socialism to be inherently contradictory with whatever brand of Christianity they held faith in.

The whole issue of near-religious worship of Hitler as Führer of the German People is tangentially related, but shows how unquestioning obedience to a messianic figure and his dogma often ends up in utter tragedy.

Somewhere during my schooling I heard that Hitler did not like the idea of Jesus being a Jew. He had his propaganda folks introduce the idea that Joseph and Mary were Norwegian tourists and not from the middle east. If there is any truth to the story, it would be an odd thing for an atheist to do. Banning Darwin would certainly be part of the same mind set.

DavidCT,I've never heard of the 'Norwegian tourist' part, but it's true that Hitler regarded Jesus as a sort of 'extra-Jewish' Aryan Jew, i.e. Jesus was under direct order of 'Providence', had to assimilate Judaism to get ahead, and was then betrayed and denounced by them. So now Providence had elected Hitler to continue Jesus's work, and as he thought the Jews were responsible for the failed first attempt, he made it his task to get rid of that danger first.

No, Hitler wasn't at all thrilled with the fact of Jesus being a Jew, so he transformed him into an 'aryan' by fiat.

Never mind that the nazi idea of 'aryan' was far from what an actual aryan would be in this day and age; the Pakistani guy renting an apartment from my cousin is from the Punjab province and is thus more an aryan than I... Who is Norwegian.

And yes, Hitler did have a particular love for us Norwegians, we being extra nordic or something. For the most part, that love was not reciprocated; Norwegians have a hard time accepting pompous, self-righteous führers and Pinocchio from Austria was no exception to that rule.

And I can back up what jbritchford said; my copy of Mein Kampf (of course I have one, I am an evil atheist after all) says precisely the same thing. I would suggest making Mein Kampf compulsory reading for all theists just to debunk the 'Hitler was an atheist' bs once and for all, but I'm afraid they'd just get ideas from it...

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PLEASE NOTE: The Atheist Experience has moved to a new location, and this blog is now closed to comments. To participate in future discussions, please visit http://www.freethoughtblogs.com/axp.The Atheist Experience is a weekly live call-in television show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin. This independently-run blog (not sponsored by the ACA) features contributions from current and former hosts and co-hosts of the show.